The she might have had in religion was also de- | wrongly-some verses in an allegorical stroyed by his insane speculations? This poem, called Epipsychidion, into an attack unhappy union did not last many years. on his first wife. In spring 1813, a separation took place between him and his wife, and she went to reside with her father and sister in Bath. Her death occurred about two years after the separation. facts. Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Windsor to Cricklade. Alaster' was composed on his return." In 1816, Shelley married again. restlessness of mere boyhood had ceased. His pecuniary circumstances had greatly improved. This alone would be likely to render his second marriage happy. His When Shelley had separated from his wife, wife, herself a woman of great genius, and he seems to have wandered for a year or who regarded Shelley with almost idolatwo over the continent. On her death he trous veneration, has preserved a perfect went to Bath to reclaim his children that record of his latter life. It was passed, for were under her father's care. Whenever the first two or three years of their union, this incident is alluded to, the writers of between visits to the continent and occaShelley's life feel it not unbecoming to up-sional residences in England, often in the braid Lord Eldon for his conduct, in what neighbourhood of the Thames. is called depriving Shelley of his children. The language is probably thoughtlessly used, "As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the but it suggests an absolutely false state of continent," says Mrs. Shelley," he went abroad. He visited some of the more magnificent scenes of. One of the children was born after Switzerland, and returned to England from Luthe separation, and neither of them had cerne by the Reuss and the Rhine. This river ever been under Shelley's exclusive care. navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem When the separation took place, his daugh- of Thalaba his imagination had been delighted by ter and the child then born were left with such a voyage. The summer of 1815 was passed, her father. Shelley never saw them after-after a visit to Devonshire, on the borders of Windsor Forest. He visited the source of the wards. We cannot think it possible that any one who ever sat in the Chancellor's seat in England could have, on the facts stated, come to any other conclusion than that which was forced on Lord Eldon, in the case of a man who had printed and circulated works-his friends stupidly seemed to rely on the fact, that they were not, in the bookseller's sense of the word, published works-in which he denied the existence of a God, and who gave the court no reason to think that he had changed his opinion. To such a man the education of children could not and ought not to have been intrusted-and we confess that our sympathies are altogether with the unfortunate grandfather of the children who had already lost his daughter, and who had bitter reason to judge of Shelley's principles by the fruit which he had seen them bear. Of Shelley himself it is impossible to think with other than feelings of tenderness; but the question for Lord Eldon was not how Shelley's opinions originated-and what the virtues of the individual were, which may perhaps have been in some views of the subject evidenced by the sort of persecution he underwent. We think Lord Eldon was throughout right in his judgment on this case, and his language, as given in Jacob's Law Reports, is calm and forbearing. Some very fierce verses of Shelley's, against Lord Eldon, are preserved by Mrs. Shelley, and Medwin interprets-we think Alaster is a poem beautifully conceived, and beautifully executed. Of Shelley's poems, it alone is perfect in its truth-of Shelley's poems, it alone is free from the disturbing influences of the war with society in which he had so early and so madly engaged. We have said that in all Shelley's poems his study of Southey's works is manifested. In all Shelley's poems there is evidence of original genius of the very highest order; but the early works of a poet cannot but exhibit the food on which his spirit feeds. Shelley had not, at any period of his life, studied largely our earlier writers; and at the time Queen Mab and Alaster were written we think it improbable that he had read any English poetry of an earlier date than that of the great poets of his own time. Wordsworth's poem of Tintern Abbey, and the passage in Joan of Arc which describes the inspiration of the heroine, seem to have possessed his imagination when "Alaster" was written. Such imitation as this implies is for the most part unconscious, and only analogous to a child expressing its own thoughts and feelings in its parents' language. "Alaster" represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius-we use Shelley's language-drinking deep of the fountains of knowledge, and yet insatiate. While his desires point to the external universe, he is tranquil and joyous; but the period arrives when this ceases to suffice. "His mind is at length suddenly awakened, and thirsts for an intelligence suitable to itself. He images to himself the being whom he loves." He is the creature of imagination, and seeks to unite in one object all that he can picture to his mind of good, or pure, or true: he seeks that which must end in disappoint"Blasted by disappointment, he descends into an untimely grave." ment. is "The poet's self-centred seclusion avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin; and hence the name of the poem-the word "Alaster" signifying the avenger of crime, and the criminal. Both uses of the word seem present to Shelley's mind in a case where the crime was that of too intense indulgence of imagination, and where the punishment is a vain search in the world of actual life for an ideal which is the creation of the mind itself, and which could not, under any conceivable conditions, be realized. Shelley wrote the poem in the belief that he himself was dying. Abscesses had formed on his lungs, and recovery seemed to his physicians impossible. Physical suffering is the hot-bed of genius; and the strange circumstances of his life were calculated to make Shelley look inward on his own nature and being. The poem is one of touching solemnity. In the language there is not, as far as we know, a strain of melody sustained throughout at the same elevation. Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands Night Nothing can be finer than the passage that follows:- "Roused by the shock, he started from his trance: fled The hues of heaven that canopied his bower “While daylight held Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight His wanderings are described, and then follows a very striking passage: "The cottagers In his career: the infant would conceal That wasted him, would call him with false names; | The name of Allah, as he hasten'd on. "A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, A Christian woman spinning at the door The composition of the two passages is the same, although the probability is, that Shelley had no distinct recollection of the passage he was imitating. Alaster is in all respects superior to Queen Mab, Shelley's earliest poem. The vicious structure of society is the subject of Queen Mab-and all its evils are presented to the imagination as if they could be at once removed by strong exertion of the will. It is but for each individual to will it—war, mar Startled by his own thoughts, he look'd around-riage, religion, and all the miseries that disquiet life will at once cease. Shelley's self-deception arises from his contemplat The mystery of the poem deepens. A lit-ing man's nature as it is in self, as it extle shallop, floating near the shore, catches his eye, "It had been long abandon'd, for its sides isted in Paradise anterior to the existence of society-and from this drawing inferences that can have no application to the artificial state of existence which we, and our parents, and our children, are born into. Absolute, unmodified rights there are none; and of the necessary modifications it is not possible that a boy of eighteen should have experience enough of life to form any right estimate. Shelley is almost inspired when His voyage is described, and finally his he holds communion with his own mind death. The poem is in form narrative, but, alone and reveals its movements. His fanthroughout, the language is steeped in the tasies, when they would stretch at all bedeepest hues of passion, and from it might yond that which ought to have been "the be augured with certainty the future great haunt and main region of his song," are dramatic poet. The romance of the subject mere dreams, and ought to be remembered As to religion, perjustifies and almost demands a pomp of or forgotten as such. words which would be out of place in the haps the most valuable lesson that can be more sober scenes in which Wordsworth has learned from Shelley's poetry is, that man Keats dreamed placed the interlocutors in the Excursion. cannot exist without one. We are far from regarding Shelley as in out a sort of heathen mythology for himmental power inferior to Southey, but we self, in which he seems to have had a kind can everywhere trace the influence of the of belief;-and Shelley in his Queen Mab elder poet's mind. We have alluded to Joan -a poem in which the existence of a Creaof Arc and Thalaba, and in the passages tor of the world is denied-speaks of a which we have just quoted from Alaster, is spirit of the universe, and a co-eternal it possible to avoid remembering the dream fairy of the earth. Verily, this Atheism by which Roderic is summoned to his is a strange pretence. It is at once lost in appointed task, and the effect of his appear- pantheism or polytheism; indeed, nothing ance among those engaged in the business but the transitoriness of words, and the of ordinary life? any impossibility of permanently uniting by "all yearnings of the human mind for something | tions, good taste is violated by the introbeyond itself, which it is unable to supply duction of sacred names, for the purpose -and which it seeks to create for itself by of increasing the effect of some of the one fiction or another. Shelley was a child, scenes in his poems. Prometheus is made, with a child's simplicity and goodness; but in one passage, to witness in vision the a child's entire inexperience ;-of the world stupendous mystery of our Lord's cruciwithin his own bosom none could be more fixion, and to sympathize with the sufferer. entirely conscious. There he saw clearly We feel this sort of patronage more offen-as clearly as natural reason-"The light sive--absolutely more offensive than the that lighteneth every man that comes into passages in Queen Mab, in which the lanthe world," enabled him. It seems strange guage is of unmitigated scorn; yet it how a boy educated in a Christian country would be unfair not to acknowledge that it should have been left so entirely to himself shows an improved state of feeling on the on subjects of religion; for his education subject in Shelley's mind. In the Revolt in which, no adequate provision seems to of Islam, too, we are glad to state our enhave been made by his parents or his mas-tire belief in Shelley's statement, that" the ters. He seems to have been left to himself erroneous and degrading idea, which men almost entirely, and to have judged by the have conceived of a Supreme Being, is spoevils which he everywhere saw in the insti- ken against, but not the Supreme Being tutions of society, many of which seemed himself." This is different-essentially to exist in direct counteraction of their different-from the temper in which Queen original purposes. The astonishing thing Mab is written, and in which he himself in Shelley is, that in spite of great neglect indulges in the violent passions which he in his instructors-in spite of a sort of self-imputes to others. The "Revolt of Islam," education conducted on the principle, that though written a few years after "Alaster," everything his masters thought to teach was written in the same feeling of approachhim was worthless-in spite of his early ing death, and in the hope-nay rather studies of all circulating library nonsense with the determination-of leaving a record -in spite of his own additions to its store of himself. It contains many passages of -in spite of his extreme disputatiousness great beauty, but is deformed-we speak of -in spite of boyish vanity; there can be it as a poem--by much political disquisino doubt that there are, through his whole tion, which has neither the calmness of short life, decided improvement-an in- philosophy, nor the less sober charm of creasing disposition towards a juster appre- poetry. It was written in the summer ciation of the views of other men-a be- months of 1817, when he lived at Marlow; nevolence that led him, not alone in his "in his boat as it floated under the beech writings to inculcate, but in his practice groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in to realize the lesson of never returning evil the neighboring country, which is distinfor evil. We do not think that there is guished for peculiar beauty." Marlow was reason to say, as has been sometimes said, then inhabited by a very poor populationthat his views had changed with respect to the women lacemakers. "The poor laws," Christianity; on this subject and not on says Mrs. Shelley, "ground to the dust, this subject alone-we really think there not only the paupers, but those who had was in his mind a taint of insanity. The risen just above that state, and were obhatred, the malignity of feeling with which liged to pay poor-rates." Shelley was Christianity is treated by this preacher of generous, and did what he could to relieve unlimited toleration, is we think to be ac- the distress. Howitt went a year or two counted for by nothing else. His infidelity ago to Marlow, to look after such recollecis something not unlike Newman's, and tions or traditions as might remain of the arising very much in the same way. He poet. One man remembered his boat, on excludes the books in which the doctrines the stern of which was painted its nameof Christianity are contained, as any part of the evidence which is to show what Christianity is, and assumes the history of a world, warring with every one of its doctrines, to be the history of Christianity. Nothing can be more offensive than the tone in which, to speak of no higher considera "The Vaga," and that some Marlow wag had added the letters bond. This he told exultingly-and this seemed to end the record. At last an obscure whisper ran among the circle that gathered round the inquisitorial quaker, of one man who did remember him. He was sent for, and he If he arrive there. came. Howitt sat silent, listening till the | Petrella, in the Apulian Appenines "Art thou the squire? Or parson of the parish? Or the attorney?" was the thought of the wondering quaker, as he gazed on the tall gaunt figure. Can he be the executor? was the thought of the man in black, who at last revealed the secret of his recollection, and said he had good cause to remember Mr. Shelley. He was a very good man. When they left Marlow they directed all their bills to be sent in all that were sent in were paid. His--he was a chandler-was neglected to be sent and was not paid. Howitt rushed to his carriage, indignant at the baseness of mankind, indignant too at the sad fact that the house once occupied by Shelley is now a pot-house! one of his Beatrice. He must not arrive. tower? Lucretia. What sound is that? Hark!—No, it cannot be a servant's step, Beatrice. That step we hear approach must never pass The bridge of which we spoke." It is impossible for us, within the limits to which we must confine ourselves, to speak as we could wish of Shelley's mastery It must be Cenci. over language-which was gradually becoming perfect. The exceeding subtlety of his thoughts was such as to demand every aid that words could give, and the result was a power of language such as no English poet rock overhanging the precipice, and the In this passage, the description of the has before attained. This, had Shelley lived, would probably have made him our simile forced as it were on the imagination greatest poet, for there is no of the speaker, by the circumstances in poems that gives in any degree an adequate which she is compelled to think of her fameasure of his intellectual power. We ther's guilt, is absolutely the finest thing we feel of him as if he had created a language, have ever read. In the Prometheus there in which he did not live long enough to is a passage of great power, which in the have written anything. He died while his same manner is justified by the way in which best powers were yet immature. The efit is put into the mouth of Asia, the devotet of such poems as he did write was di-ed lover of Prometheus: inished by his lavish expenditure of this rich and overflowing language, which goes beyond the thought, and instead of expressing conceals it or magnifies it into undue pomp. Each successive work exhibited increased power of condensation-and language, by doing no more than its proper business, had a thousandfold more power. Of this the Cenci is a re markable instance. It is Shelley's greatest poem. The others are, in comparison with it, scarcely more than the exercises of a boy, disciplining himself for the tasks of an after period of life. In modern poetry there is nothing equal to the passage describing the scene of the proposed murder shall we not say execution of the father. "Lucretia. To-morrow before dawn, Cenci will take us to that lonely rock, "Hark! the rushing snow! Whatever the merit of the passage may be, considered as descriptive, its true value is of another kind. That every object in bride-that his defiance of Jupiter should nature should suggest Prometheus to his bride-that his defiance of Jupiter should sented to her imagination, in a journey be above all things, and by all things presented to her imagination, in a journey which is taken for the very purpose of appealing against the tyranny of the despotic ruler of the skies to some higher power, is, we think, a proof of the highest dramatic I genius in the poet. We are reminded of a |